Section 4: Resources

Accessibility related links

Assistive technology

Read more information about refreshable braille displays.

The following screen readers are mostly used by blind users, and offer the most advanced level of functionality:

JAWS for Windows by Freedom Scientific
Window-Eyes by GW Micro
HAL and Supernova (which also handles screen magnification) by Dolphin Computer Access.

Tutorials

The following tutorials can be used by web designers who are interested in making accessible websites.

Tutorial on how to make your website 508 compliant.
'Web Accessibility In Mind', also known as WebAIM, provides a short tutorial on how to make your website accessible as well as a range of products and tools related to Web accessibility including simulations of what it is like to be a blind user.
Techniques for following WCAG guidelines

Accessibility guidelines

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), developed by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative are most widely accepted guidelines for accessibility, and a good start for achieving an acceptable level of accessibility for a website.
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act is similar to the W3C Web Content Accessbility guidelines, but can be obligatory for certain organizations (for example federal organizations).

Additional Software tools

Automated evaluation tools

The following tools detect accessibility issues in a given website and explain to web designers how to fix these issues.

The Bobby evaluation tool, provided by Watchfire.
The Web Content Accessibility Checking Service, provided by the W3C.
TIDY: an HTML cleanup tool.

Mozilla Firefox Extensions

Mozilla Firefox is an open source browser which is compatible with major screen readers such as JAWS and Window-Eyes. Because Mozilla browsers are open source, it is possible for developers to create extensions for them, including accessibility related extensions such as the following:

Charles Chen (University of Texas) has developed Fire Vox: an open source screen reader for Mozilla Firefox.
The Illinois Center for Instructional Technology Accessibility developed the 'Mozilla accessibility extension' which helps web designers detect their site's accessibility issues.
The Fangs screen reader emulator is a Firefox extension that turns a website into text the same way a screen reader would.
Hans Hillen is working on a project called 'NavAccess', of which at the time of writing one module has been implemented in the form of a link list with advanced filtering functionality. For more information about this project visit the NavAccess homepage.